


The Dollmaker's Final Creation

by Matloc



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Tragedy, asshole!Kise, doll!AU, doll!Kuroko, slight KiKuro, slight MidoKuro - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 00:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4080109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matloc/pseuds/Matloc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tetsuya is cold like winter, and Seijuurou dutifully waits for a spring that never comes.</p><blockquote>
  <p>“We can fix him… right, Akashicchi?” Ryouta asks with a tremble in his jaw.</p>
  <p>He thought he had learnt everything under Seijuurou’s tutelage but this… this is something far beyond his imagination. Where does he even start putting it all back together?</p>
  <p>“We can fix Tetsuya. We can.”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	The Dollmaker's Final Creation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arachnophobia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arachnophobia/gifts), [taikodrum (taiko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taiko/gifts), [ceallachrion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceallachrion/gifts).



> thanks for being my friends

 

The kingdom of Teikou had been little more than an embellished graveyard once. Where fallen kings came to die, burying with them all hopes and dreams in a chalice of bony hands and pallid faces. Where the rest of people wiped like a smudge of blood on black canvas, a crown of misery left in the midst of their skull-hinged vestiges. The sole companion to their graves. No longer a symbol of glory when it was wrung in cobwebs and maggots; just a reminder of human failure. Gold, honor, and blood.

Nobody knows how the kingdom came to life again. Fallen archives only tell the tale of a special breed of humans, the stuff from fairy tales. People who could breathe life into wooden endoskeletons as if they had the right to live. Walk amongst flesh-wearing bodies like they too could breathe, could feel pain and tears and succumb to nature’s cruel whims.

In the end, they were only dolls. Jewels of falsehood from skin to smiles.

Though such an utterance barked blasphemy in the era of dollmakers. Only someone who has lived then and there could recognize their importance. The agonizing need that couldn’t be penned in words. Tragedy after all makes desperate believers out of even the most miserable cynics.

The eminent line of dollmakers perished with a man named Akashi Seijuurou, known to possess the hands of a magician. It is said that his final creation died alongside him, joined in their fading breaths. Ideal ends to ideal bonds.

Then again, all that is only stuff from fairy tales.

* * *

There are two things Seijuurou never forgets. Two rules drilled into his head by his father when Seijuurou had just learned how to walk.

One: though it doesn’t show, dolls are much more fragile than humans. They break with a single blow, single fall, never coming back to life like humans do with a kiss of a miracle, his father warned him. Tenacity and resilience only come in things that bleed red.

Two: never confuse a doll for a person. They may share the same appearance with humans, may even speak the same thoughts, but they are no more than tools with human hearts. There is magic in a dollmaker’s hands, but even Seijuurou cannot reach human depths in a skeleton he crafts with his own hands. The nuances that lie in cracks that flow with emotions, a river of thoughts and contradictions one cannot fathom without a human eye.

All this, he must never forget, his father would remind him again and again. Carve it into his bones if need be.

As the years roll by and his father’s name ends up on a tombstone, Seijuurou does come close to making humans in dolls. He never forgets, of course; no he is not the one fooled by the marvel of his own hands.

Untaught eyes see a different thing entirely, under stone cold skin and hollow weight. Companions. Friends. A meaning you only find in human bonds, Seijuurou delivers with magic hands.

Only when all semblance of life leaves Seijuurou for a month, as he devotes himself to creating Tetsuya, does he reach human perfection.

He must never forget two important things. The only promise he’s made to his father. Never forget the boundaries one cannot cross.

It is not the promise he fails to remember.

Time undoes a heartstring with Tetsuya at his side throughout the next few years, one at a time like plucking crystalline hymns from a harp. That when his faithful companion smiles at him now, Seijuurou falls into the sky and forgets that he cannot make love to a doll.

That is all he forgets.

Yet it never ceases to haunt him—when he wakes up to the moon shining on a blue crown of hair next to him—a single pale eye judging silently from the heavens, more vengeful than any broken promise.

* * *

The courtyard of Seijuurou’s mansion is no playground, he must remind Tetsuya time and again. Every instance which Tetsuya willfully ignores, as if to show the world he’s not some puppet with strings.

Such an ulterior motive lies beneath his benevolence, when he brings the children from the nearby orphanage to their mansion.

Tiny heads laugh and play with a man they might love as a father they’ve never had. Or perhaps a hook of childish fascination with dolls is what lures them into Tetsuya’s illusionary world, draped in vibrant colors and diamond patterns. They never make it clear to him, their innate materialism, a secret locked in a chain of tiny fists that refuses to break for any adult.

One can never tell what lies in between transient smiles, what truths they hide behind the gaps in crooked white teeth. Practiced, mechanical, real. Too real. Stealing the shine from everything else until it becomes shadowed in his vision, though Tetsuya himself has never been anything but. Behind blue eyes and hair that mimics blessings of clear skies, under the lifelike translucence of skin, he carries a casket of shadows for a soul.

Sometimes, humans are no different.

When eve begins to peer through orange cracks, it is time for supper. The children leave with cheers of goodbyes, words that drop their weight on Tetsuya’s chest and anchor him to reality.

The cranks in his joints, machine and screws. The ocean in his eyes, sapphire gems from sea-buried treasure chests. A feast for crows, and naive youth who have only seen spring bloom in a world framed by rose vignettes.

Many have mistaken Tetsuya for the real deal, shaded by hope that he may deliver, might reflect the glass in their feelings with his own lips. Deceptiveness cradles lovelorn hearts with a warm touch, the comfort of a fireplace in an age of snow, of a mother’s hand when in repose of nightmares. Soft, kind brush of feathers against the heart.

When they fall, it punishes with cruelty. Dousing sweet warmth in fire that scars forever, in tears of rejection, in the quiver of lungs. Truth is a most bitter remedy for unrequited love, they will learn.

But it doubles back and burns Tetsuya with a cacophony of disillusioned words, and in the crux of it all sits Akashi Seijuurou, smug yet oblivious, on his throne of reverence. For being the last of his kind. The best in his line of work. Talented enough to make dolls that can deceive the human eye. Even so, Seijuurou is no harbinger of suffering.

Tetsuya—he brings it onto himself. The pain, the _regret,_  so very human. So easy to pretend.

The sun falls and Tetsuya walks back inside, heart heavy and eyes drooping. Seijuurou is there to greet him as usual, taking him in strong arms, holding him like the doll he is.

“You should stop,” whispers Seijuurou against his lips every evening. “Stop mingling with them.”

It’s a mantra that cuts Tetsuya deep and clear, dagger sinking deep in the hollow where his organs should be. Each time he pretends it doesn’t hurt.

“Why?” is the only thing Tetsuya asks him.

Seijuurou, like every other time, grabs Tetsuya’s wrist. Pulls it to his lips and feels the cold skin, the jut of his bone, the trace of veins that can’t bleed. A reminder that Tetsuya’s realism is more decoration than function.

“You are not like the others.” Seijuurou writes a curse where Tetsuya’s lifeline should be, with lips and teeth.

Not human, is what Tetsuya hears.

* * *

Tetsuya is no chef. But he is loyal, and his love for his master has expanded his repertoire of skills from a killer boiled egg to plain light meals, edible to most extent. Bread and soup almost always accompanying the barely average entree.

Seijuurou finishes all of it, as diligent as he is with every duty in life. He never complains. Not even a peep of a demand from his mouth.

“I will eat anything made from Tetsuya’s hands, after all.” Seijuurou, born and bred to have a way with words, says to him at times.

“I will only eat food prepared by Tetsuya,” he insists other times. When he’s feeling forceful, no room for sweet nothings when there is only desire, need, and loneliness.

Seijuurou will never let him go. He always makes that clear to Tetsuya when night falls and a silver candelabra on his bedside table serves as their only witness. Burning shadows on striped wallpaper. Sometimes two, sometimes only one, joined in mismatched movement. A perfect disarray of limbs in dance, frenzy, power and then—

Nothing.

—

The first one to wake up is Tetsuya. Always. He must get himself decent before tending to his master.

Disagreement wraps him from behind, in a cage of arms and soft lips pecking his shoulder.

Tetsuya is treasure, and Seijuurou treats him well with a flutter of kisses along the length of his back. A greeting here, a compliment there. Seijuurou presses these words of affection every morning into Tetsuya’s skin without fail. His daily prayer soaked in yestreen’s sin.

But Tetsuya—he is as cold as always in his hands.

Another small detail to forget.

* * *

They normally didn’t take extra help. Customers come slowly, waiting their turn until their pockets are jingling with gold coins.

With the recent rise of deaths—a string of serial murders amongst the elite—new faces show up at Seijuurou’s door. A procession of red-rimmed eyes and dark clothes. All looking for the same thing.

“Please bring my son back,” a mother’s voice cracks in askance. The noose of pearls around her neck glints suggestively.

“I cannot.” Seijuurou lays down the truth, quick and concise. “However, I will give you the next best thing, if you pay the right price.”

And so he begins, with a fancy portrait of his next creation stacked on a lone easel. He toils with magic in his hands, day and night until his client’s son can look her in the eye again.

To this day Seijuurou has yet to disappoint a client. Perhaps death makes one settle for less. Less than what they had before. But he is not one to bank in on wrecked emotions, never absconding his duty to deliver perfection, or as close as he can reach with his hands.

He is the only dollmaker left, his clients readily take whatever they can get. Heeding neither form nor function, only the resemblance they want to see. Humanity in the embodiment of illusion.

Seijuurou is not one to judge. He has his own vices, all of which orbit around Tetsuya’s presence, his form, his make. From the blue of his hair to the gems in his eyes, the swell of his cheeks, the plaster of his skin.

Cold, so cold.

Forget it.

* * *

Work is piling, with a rise in body count, and that’s where Kise Ryouta comes in. A part-timer who is a natural socialite, working his pretty face and beguiling smile like a fox bred to deceive. Hysterical customers are kept under his charge, impatient ones under his charm. Managing people becomes easy with Ryouta’s help, so Seijuurou decides to keep him around.

On slow days Ryouta helps Tetsuya with the upkeep of the rest of the dolls. Ones that Seijuurou isn’t willing to deliver just yet when even a smudge on skin or cloth is enough to make his lip curl in distaste. Perfection is a demanding effort, and till then the other dolls sleep like the dead.

Last week marked two months of Ryouta’s employment. Enough for him to call himself adept, he decides, growing a big head whenever his so-called instructor is around. Ryouta thinks he is eons better than that doll; he sees no reason to follow what that sham says.

Things between him and Tetsuya have been rocky since then.

“Kise-kun.”

Ryouta jumps a mile in the sky, nearly dropping the macarons he got from a group of girls on his way from a delivery. He turns around, lips pursed.

“Darn it, Tetsuya. You sure you’re not a ghost?” he sneers, not masking any truths behind a sweet smile when he’s with the damned doll. Tetsuya is used to this, a curious gaze instead dropping to the colorful array of treats on the blond's plate.

Ryouta is quick to notice. He’s always been observant, more so when it comes to Tetsuya.

“Oh, these?” He shakes a red macaron in his hand. “Want some?”

Only he didn’t expect Tetsuya to actually try and receive what he’s never offered. Like lightning he pulls his arm back, a momentary crack forms in the window of contempt.

“Oops,” Ryouta pops it in his mouth, sugar and satisfaction exploding in his mouth as he swallows it whole.

The look on Tetsuya’s face.

“Too bad, huh? You dolls can’t eat.” Ryouta grins with cruel teeth, they glint in the light as if they might be holding a dagger between them, shaving off the follies of an artificial ego until it breaks in his mouth. Tetsuya is used to it.

“Thank you for your hard work today, Kise-kun.” He bows. Ryouta gets a glimpse of lashes that flutter lightly on pale cheeks, lips tinted red, as if blood can truly flow in plastic veins. Ryouta ends up having to swallow something different this time. A faint heat. Teasing. Rising.

He knows very well why Seijuurou keeps Tetsuya around.

“Mmm, I really don’t know why Akashicchi hasn’t sold you yet. I help out enough for two anyhow.” He masks it all with another flurry of harsh words. Douses the heat with frost in his lies.

Tetsuya is used to it. Silent as a doll—the doll that he is—on the face of every verbal assault. He simply bids goodbye and walks out.

Ryouta is not.

The look on Tetsuya’s face.

There’s a shiver left in his spine still.

—

“Kise-kun, please be more gentle with them.” Tetsuya advises once, when he finds the blond scrubbing a chocolate-skinned doll’s face shiny, ready to be taken home by some rich patron. Ryouta sees no point to it; they are just dolls, lucky to have never known pain. He tells Tetsuya this much.

“We do.” Tetsuya says, placing a hand over his diamond-patterned chest. “In here.”

He smiles at him, a bit droopy, a bit fake. Like he knows something Ryouta doesn’t.

“Ehhh…” says Ryouta, indifference written all over his face, the drag in his voice. “I don’t know about that.”

It’s a lie, through and through. He has no inkling of the magic Seijuurou pours in their cogwheels, but he’s seen it firsthand. A tempest of emotions he finds in humans rolling just as fiercely in mechanical currents. They feel, they think. Just like humans.

Ultimately, they’re anything but.

The smile doesn’t go away, and Ryouta reassembles his thoughts, curbs the urge to put a hand to his own chest when he feels it twist. It is not fake, he thinks.

Tetsuya’s smile—it’s only sad.

* * *

Out of all clients, Midorima Shintarou is perhaps the most indulgent. His request is quite the heavy challenge, one that Seijuurou readily takes on. Shintarou returns part of the price in kind, though he never thought that would entail becoming a regular chess player at Seijuurou’s grand abode.

“Check,” Shintarou corners a black king with his queen.

“A common mistake; you lack awareness." Seijuurou explains like his word is law. He proceeds to take out the queen with a black bishop that he’d been hiding away on Midorima’s side of the board.

The match ends in less than three turns.

If there’s one exception that should be added to the rulebook of chess, it’s that Akashi Seijuurou always wins.

Even so, Shintarou will beat him some day.

"Again," he demands, pushing up his horn-rimmed glasses.

Seijuurou smiles. Sometimes playing with another challenger, one aside from his brain, has its own merits. He slips a glimpse at the door.

Alas, "My apologies, Shintarou, however I must get back to work. I would love to indulge you some more any other day.” He stands up, puts on his classic business charm, all smiles and open body language: another trait he adopted from his father, and perfected.

Not that it ever works on Shintarou, who only huffs in return, looking at the doorway, where Tetsuya has been standing in wait for quite some time now.

“Y-You!” Shintarou croaks, and Tetsuya takes it as a greeting because he’s learnt all the quirks, the kinks in tension that straightens his tall posture: upright and rigid. Mangled discomfort awkwardly ironed into proper manners that only duty-bound honor can flesh out.

He bows lightly. “Midorima-kun, thank you for dropping by today as well.”

“It… can’t be helped,” Shintarou gives his regular excuse. “I have to follow Akashi’s stipulations until he’s done with my request.”

“Indeed,” Tetsuya agrees half-heartedly, a smile playing on his lips. Shintarou has always been a favorite of his.

He holds out a basket of muffins.

“As Seijuurou-sama’s humble servant, I must thank you for extending your hand to him in friendship.” He ignores the loud cough from his bespectacled guest. “Please take this, as a token of my gratitude.”

Shintarou gets up, taking the basket in his hands. “I wasn’t aware you could bake too." He will examine them for poison, just in case.

"I have a friend who works at the bakery down the street. He taught me a couple of tricks.” Tetsuya speaks with such pride that Shintarou doesn’t have the heart to reject it anymore.

“I see… thank you.” He mumbles, looking away when Tetsuya offers him a brilliant smile.

“Tetsuya.” Seijuurou looks at him with a confused frown, almost sounding offended. “I do not see my share.” He tilts his head, curious like a bird, checking Tetsuya’s back in case he’s hidden it.

“That’s because I’ve only made Midorima-kun’s batch. You will be having it for dessert tonight, so please be patient.”

“Ah, but of course.” Seijuurou gives a satisfied nod, and Shintarou releases a sigh of relief. A brewing storm has been thwarted before the sky could split open with someone’s tears, probably his own, Shintarou shudders.

That is, until Ryouta decides to join the party.

“Oh, it’s Midorimacchi!”

“Get off me, you scoundrel!”

—

Ryouta and Shintarou are a racket that way, their ridiculous antics putting up a show that would put actual court jesters to shame.

It makes Tetsuya want to laugh out loud. He even feels a knot bubble inside him, ready to burst out in hard, staccato breaths like he’s never been allowed to laugh before.

He hasn’t.

He lacks the most fundamental things: lungs; organs that regulate life inside the human body, he has no need for them. No matter how much he tries, he can’t imitate what he doesn’t have. The air is choked in the cogs of his throat, and that’s as close to it he can get.

So he watches on with a smile instead. Silent, empty, like a temple without shrines, and its only pilgrim is the moss that festers underneath flakes of rusted bells.

The space inside him feels heavy all of a sudden.

* * *

Tetsuya still has a heart. It’s how a dollmaker grants life to his creations, a god in his own right. But try as he might, the gods in Seijuurou cannot pull out love from Tetsuya’s heart.

That is another thing Seijuurou is willing to forget.

“Do you love me now, Tetsuya?” he asks into an aftermath that soaks them in sweat and come. Silence falls on the rhythm of Seijuuro’s chest, rising and falling to control his breathing, and Tetsuya, who doesn’t breathe at all.

Only then does Tetsuya remind him, “You said I am different, Seijuurou.”

In bed, there are no titles signed in the sheets, of master and servant, of human and doll. A reprieve wrapped in silken dreams of blood, lungs, stomach, and bone floats in the hollow of his machine. He can pretend best when it’s dark and all he sees is Seijuurou. Just that is enough.

In the end, Seijuurou also falls prey to blindness, for different reasons, but they are two sides to the same coin.

“Yes, that is why you need only stay with me.” Seijuuro replies, taking a thin wrist to his lips and placing a wreath of kisses around it. Tetsuya feels the weight of shackles, binding him to this bed, to this man, skin and muscle and so much more than Tetsuya will ever be.

He never tries to break free.

“Do you love me?” Seijuurou repeats like a broken record that’s been kept playing over the years. Tetsuya remembers the first time, years ago, when he asked him, with the same patient silence as always where Tetsuya’s left with pretty words stewing in his mind.

What comes out is charred shame, seasoned with regret and hope that Seijuurou will be able to swallow it all someday. Maybe one day he will let this failed love go. "I’m sorry.“

But those words remain lodged in the cracks and Seijuurou papers over the hurt with a kiss to Tetsuya’s forehead. He shuts his eyes like it could blind him from the blade of reality that sits at his feet, waiting for him to fall.

With Tetsuya, defeat is the only ending in sight.

Seijuurou doesn’t know that yet.

* * *

The town is bustling with policemen knocking on every layman’s door, in light of the recent spike in murders. The wealthier class is spared from interrogation of course, when justice and silence can be bought with money. Only fear makes them lay low for a while, no posh outings or grand balls making it in the itinerary of starry-eyed bachelors.

In the midst of all this commotion, a brand new client busts through Seijuurou’s door.

Ryouta and Tetsuya look up instantly at the quiet that’s been disrupted, the clack of heavy boots and the rustle of velvet against fur stirring up a commotion only bluebloods dare leave in their wake. It’s a mark of their entrance, an obnoxious grab at attention with their charade.

Moreover, it’s a resounding dismissal to the less fortunate.

This young man looks fresh out of school, barely even touching two decades despite that looming height of his. Or the ashen hair cropped in messy angles, perhaps that’s the new trend amongst boys these days.

“Heh…” he looks around the place and grins, youthful rowdiness lining his cheeks like it’s a written confession of the character that lurks behind stormy eyes. “Not bad.”

Tetsuya is quick at his feet, approaching him at the foyer, bowing right before they could meet eyes. “Welcome to our shop, good sir. Please make yourself comfortable.”

He steps around the customer, hands sliding on broad shoulders to help take off the coat, only to be smacked away as a shout rips through the mansion. “Get off!”

The sting in Tetsuya’s hands lasts longer than a moment, it reverberates through the screws in his joints, all the way to the quake of Ryouta’s fingers as they clench into a fist. A spike of emotion that catches him off guard, and he averts his eyes from Tetsuya before he does something stupid.

When the shock in his body dissipates, Tetsuya exaggerates deference in the low dip of his head. “My deepest apologies.”

This is not the first customer to treat Tetsuya this way, looking past the reflection of his human veil to see him as a doll to be used and thrown around—no, rather he’s a person who sees humans as dolls, pitiful objects for him to order around. To bend to his will, and break and discard them when their spine cracks with the force of his thoughtless whims. Tetsuya shivers, keeps his gaze permanently locked on the floor like he’s expected to.

Doll and human, some people neglect the difference.

Tetsuya is no better.

The gray-haired visitor gives Tetsuya a once-over, examining his worth no doubt. Maybe it’s the face, the eyes that show you skies, or maybe it’s the body, small and pliant like what Haizaki Shougo appreciates best.

He snorts. "What are you, a clown?”

Today's pattern of vivid colors bleeds red diamonds unto black. Frills covering Tetsuya's neckline and the suit covering the rest of his body. His wardrobe brings no variety for any day, the only change coming in colors, from pastel to black and white, and the occasional stripes around his arms and legs.

It draws too much attention, but only children are enticed to actually chase its colors, and that’s all well and good for Tetsuya. They’re much easier to handle than a boy who looks like he’s tasted blood before.

“You must be Haizaki’s son,” comes from above, where Seijuurou is standing at the top of the stairs, like he rules over everything he looks down on from his position.

“Oh, you the dollmaker?” says Shougo, grinning mirth and a first impression that falls short of expectations. This wasn’t the type of man he’d think would make dolls for a living.

The feeling is mutual when Seijuurou hardly spares a glance, not even bothering to properly greet his customer, eventually offering only one word, “Come.”

He turns around and heads inside.

Shougo follows without a sound this time, but the urge to break something is still there. For as long as Tetsuya stays in his line of sight.

“Your father never specified what sort of make he wanted. I assume he entrusted agency onto you?” Seijuurou asks, looking through a desk in his work space.

It’s one of the bigger rooms in the mansion, designed for a kind of profession that leaves parts to doll and machine stacked in every corner. Organized by every viable category: size, body part, color—like it’s a collection of macabre imitations rather than unfinished creations.

Looking around offers Shougo nothing special, and he sinks back into his default state of boredom.

The ideal motivation for him to rile people up.

He scratches the back of his head. "My old man doesn’t care what you make, as long as it can warm up his bed.“

"I’m sorry, sir, but that is not the kind of thing we are meant for,” interrupts Tetsuya from behind as he follows them into the room, leaving Ryouta downstairs to keep watch for any more customers.

“Oh what, you’re a toy too?” Shougo barks in laughter. “Why don’t you stay out so the real people can talk.”

Tetsuya doesn’t find it as amusing. He only stares back with a blank face.

“Unfortunately, Tetsuya is correct. My dolls are not meant for that purpose.” Seijuurou holds up an envelope, an unsealed stamp hanging listlessly from the mouth of the cover, bearing the ominous mark of the House of Haizaki.

There’s an amused quirk in Shougo’s brow. Concern for silly toys like there’s more to them than a hedonist fantasy is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. "Heh, why do you care what happens to them? Once you sell them they’re no longer yours anyway.“

“Then it’s a good thing we will not be selling anything to your family.”

Silence. It speaks much louder, than any gaudy attire, about Shougo’s twisted personality, which begins to rear its head in manner of a bull taunted by red attractions. Much like that piercing gaze which cages him in its mismatched hypnotism, probing, unscrewing his inhibitions hinge by hinge with every blink of blood and gold.

Shougo takes the bait.

“The hell?” The bull is ready to rampage. “Why not?”

"Your family has quite the reputation, son of Haizaki.” Seijuurou is already resealing the envelope. Any prospect of a contract melts down with the wax, dripping heavy blots of rejection on the offer letter. “Your presence here today only serves to affirm it.”

People don't speak of the Haizaki family without tacking onto it the name of an infamous syndicate, said to have been behind the recent murders. But even without a blood-soaked reputation, they have been known for their involvement in most questionable practices. A lordship right under the Queen’s hand often has them abusing their power to escape controversy. From torturing servants to embezzlement, the rumors they spawn within the looming hush around their coal-painted manor scares off all wandering eyes.

Raised with a doctrine of pride and self-gain written in his books, Shougo has never been taught to answer to anyone. He’s definitely not going to answer to this guy either.

“The hell is your problem? My old man’s willing to pay a fortune for your dumb doll—much more than what they’re worth anyway.”

“Haizaki-san,” Tetsuya interrupts, startling Shougo. Hell, he completely forgot the doll's presence. “Thank you for coming all the way to visit us. Allow me to show you out.”

“Huh? You telling me to get out?” Shougo grabs him by the collar, scrunching the frills until they start to tear at the seams.

Fear is an unused cog in Tetsuya, it is not attached to the mainframe of his behavior so it never turns, unable to smooth out those kinks, those blunt words that spark out of nowhere. Like geysers that erupt randomly, he scorches the surface of a screen of self-control that is holding Shougo’s fist from his face, and it is already thinning to a crisp.

Tetsuya’s unfazed gaze meets him head on. "I am sorry to say we do not engage in business with people who do not have a good rapport with us.”

“And how do you build one with a business like yours?” Shougo smirks, “You’re one to talk, rolling in your dough with human-like toys.”

“Please do not call us ‘toys’. We are sentient, just as you are.”

Shougo has to laugh at that, letting go of Tetsuya as the bull inside sits sated now. On its haunches, where laughter rolls in waves. “I can’t believe you actually said that. Don’t tell me you’re capable of getting mad—are you?”

“That’s not it, Haizaki-san,” Tetsuya tries to explain to deaf ears. “We simply do not make dolls for people who don’t possess any knowledge about them. That defeats the purpose of having one.”

Nobody told him tiny dolls came with big mouths. Shougo can’t even make a lick of sense of what this one’s trying to say, and there’s an honest question narrowed in his eyes. “What's there to know about play toys?”

“We are not,” Kuroko retorts with grit and a calm that belies his rising frustration that has his fists curled, his jaw clenched. “Not toys,” he finishes with fingers burrowing into the lines of his palm, and the words push with just as much force. Pushing and prodding at the cogs in Shougo’s head, only they spin in a completely different direction.

“Say, dollmaker,” he starts off slowly, weighing every word in his head and analyzing the way they taste on his tongue.

Like freshwater and snow wrapped in the drooling urges of destruction.

“I’ll pay you however much you want…”

Seijuurou’s still focused on resealing the letter. Kuroko closes his mechanism around a breath.

“As long as you give me this one.”

The hands holding up wax and stamps freeze. “Declined,” Seijuurou replies with a rigid finality fenced around his words that wasn’t there before.

Rejection after rejection for reasons he can’t understand, it thrusts Shougo right at the cliff of his patience.

“Why not?” he growls, “I’ll give you double what my father offered—no, triple!”

“I believe our talk here is done.” Seijuurou hands him the envelope and Shougo’s got a retort ready at the tip of his tongue, but one look from those hypnotic eyes has his throat clamming up.

It’s still not enough to make him back down, not fully.

“Fine.” He grunts. “I’ll come another day. Next time, I’ll make you say yes.”

He shoots a meaningful look at Tetsuya before leaving, the smirk on his face telling all sorts of stories that the rumors about his family have twined around like thirsty flames lining a rim of oil.

Shougo, he might just feed the fire this time.

* * *

The silence that settles in Shougo’s wake lasts throughout the rest of the day.

“Tetsuya,” he starts after dinner, fresh out of the bath. Seijuurou smells of oranges and winter as he commences his scolding. Tetsuya finds it hard to take him seriously some times.

“Need I remind you to stay out of trouble.” He takes the sleeping garments from Tetsuya, neatly pressed without a kink in sight. That’s always how he does things for Seijuurou, kneeling on the edge of perfection like every other starting place is too barren for him. It makes Seijuurou proud, and he can only give praise where it’s due. He never lies of course, but there’s an insincerity which creeps in the heart of his praise too easily sometimes.

Sometimes he wishes things were different.

“I will not fight your battles for you,” he continues in the same breath, only Tetsuya’s never been given reason to believe that. Seijuurou is not one for fussing over possessions, but with Tetsuya he is protective in the most subtle of ways. Like a bridge that disappears whenever unwanted attention presents itself in people like Haizaki Shougo.

“Of course. Thank you for looking out for me all the time, Seijuurou-sama.” Tetsuya makes sure the depth of his gratitude shows in his bow.

“Don’t.”

Tetsuya looks up slowly. The pain he causes, it is intentional. With the way Seijuurou’s face scrunches up, a crumpled page of naked vulnerability that spells out the hurt on the lines of his mouth, he knows it too.

“Don’t call me that.”

The seasons of love in his master’s delusion fall like dead leaves.

Tetsuya is cold like winter, and Seijuurou dutifully waits for a spring that never comes.

* * *

Something’s different with Ryouta today.

“Yesterday…” He attempts to work around the maze of his concerns, trying to find the right words in the midst of swallowing all the rest. “That guy… he didn’t do anything to you, did he?”

Tetsuya blinks. “To think Kise-kun’s worried about me, I am beside myself with joy.”

Ryouta grimaces as if the very thought is too disgusting, and it’s relieving to have him back to normal again. “Uh, I don’t want Akashicchi mad at me, that’s all.”

“Of course. Nothing happened, thank you for asking.”

“Oh okay. That’s good then.” He scratches the back of his neck and goes back to cleaning up an unnamed doll.

He doesn’t meet Tetsuya’s eyes for the rest of the day.

—

“Kise-kun, would you mind trying these?”

Ryouta offers him a sideways glance before going back to checking the register, writing down a couple entries.

Then the smell hits his nose.

Sweet, like strawberry cream.

“Macarons?” he asks, eyes not leaving the tray holding an assortment of colors.

“Yes, it took me a couple days to get the recipe right, but I think these came out relatively well.”

“For me?” Ryouta points to himself with a disbelieving look on his face.

“You’ve always done your best at the shop after all. I want to convey my gratitude for always helping us out.”

Ryouta takes a while to register what he’s saying, especially with that blank face accompanying it.

“Are you perhaps full? I could pack them for you.”

But Ryouta’s already reaching for one, plopping it into his mouth. All the while he looks at Tetsuya with wide eyes like he’s seeing something new, fascinating. His eyes are glimmering like liquid gold, and this time it’s Tetsuya who gets the urge to turn away before he drowns in their lustre.

“They’re good.” Ryouta speaks through a mouthful.

“Please don’t talk while chewing. It’s unsightly.”

“Really, really good.” Ryouta goes on to stuff his face with colorful treats.

Tetsuya wants to scold him for eating too fast, but the smile blooming on his face really makes it hard to say anything harsh as he watches Ryouta devour his cooking like a starved puppy.

“Thank you for your hard work, Kise-kun.”

* * *

Seijuurou’s in his office today, and if he were a lesser man, it’d be in a mess of papers strewn about everywhere. So it’s hard to blame Tetsuya for thinking that his master is most definitely capable of superhuman feats.

He knocks on the door out of politeness then heads in, resting a plate of macarons on the table. The clank of steel is enough to finally make Seijuurou regard him with a reproachful look.

“Leftovers, Tetsuya?” He raises a fine brow in question.

The doll smiles like he was expecting this. All the years they’ve spent together leaves Tetsuya no stranger to his master’s moods. "These are freshly made, for Seijuurou.“

"I see.” He pauses, lips edging upwards, not bothering to hide his joy over receiving something from Tetsuya. “Thank you. I shall enjoy them properly once I’m done with this.”

He gestures towards his side of the table, loaded with paperwork that didn’t seem to be lessening anytime soon. Tetsuya frowns, and a sudden impulse has him going around the table and placing a hand on Seijuurou’s own. The writing immediately pauses in the midst of pristine stroke.

“You should take a break.”

Tetsuya feels cold on his palm, but it stokes a formidable heat inside him, which he then presses onto the back of Tetsuya’s hand as he brings it to his lips. 

“Very well, since Tetsuya is the one asking me." His fingers slip inside the frills, into diamond-print sleeves, teasing. Beckoning. His eyes follow the outline of his fingers through the cloth, tracing fire as he slowly moves upward. Inch by inch.

"But only if you present to me a distraction that’s worthwhile.”

His voice drops into carnal sin, and if Tetsuya could feel pain, he would burn forever under its thrall.

—

Seijuurou is like fire, never stopping until he’s consumed everything. Everything Tetsuya has to offer, and what he can’t, Seijuurou eats from his own dreams.

Tetsuya he had crafted for himself, in hopes of a companion to fill in the void left behind by his parents. But he got so much more, and like fire he is greedy, lapping up at whatever crevasses in Tetsuya’s heart he can reach.

“Love me,” he says. Flames in his throat he spills for Tetsuya like a formal proposal.

There is no love in the air for Seijuurou, no oxygen, and so the fire will die out soon one day.

“I’m sorry.”

The guilt pricks Tetsuya like burnt splinters from the remains of a wooden heart.

—

“Do you love me now?”

Tetsuya only breathes, for a long time. “Forget this, Seijuurou.”

His arms are being gripped, fingers digging deep like they might squeeze out the prettiest lie from him.

“Do you love me now?” Seijuurou won’t stop asking, won’t stop until his final breath. And he won’t die before he gets what he wants.

Like fire.

“Please, Seijuurou.”

Tetsuya never asks much from his master, and when he does, Seijuurou gives wholeheartedly. Now he begs and begs and begs every night but this conditional generosity is forgotten in the sheets like coffee stains that are too small for anyone to bother washing out. Easily ignored, then forgotten.

Seijuurou rolls him onto them, and his body droops over him like a dying hibiscus, ready to fall into Tetsuya’s shadow and fade from the sun.

“Then make me forget, Tetsuya,” he whispers, cracked and wet, Tetsuya thinks he sees red and yellow petals fall from his eyes.

So he wraps his arms around Seijuurou’s neck and pulls him down to a garden of dreams.

If the sapphires in his eyes could bleed tears, they would pour every night like monsoon rain.

—

There are two emotions that rule their relationship: love and guilt. One comes wrapped in delusion and the other is stripped bare in the throes of regret, and a jumbled loyalty that’s only allowed to express itself in a tangle of limbs and lies.

It is not evil, he does not think it so, when he uses Tetsuya’s guilt to his advantage. Makes it bend to his fingers, arch into his palm, cry his name out to the world in the dark.

If anything, it is only pitiful.

“Seijuurou.” Blue eyes glitter at him in the dying light as he catches Tetsuya by the entrance again.

Dusk has arrived and it pleases him when the children go away. Day by day he feels like he is losing to them. Losing Tetsuya to them.

“Why must you mingle with them?”

“Seijuurou.” Tetsuya repeats, only this time he sounds tired.

He caresses Tetsuya’s face, pale like porcelain but he feels much more fragile. "You are not like them.“ He reminds the doll.

No more words are exchanged after that, all feelings swallowed up by Seijuurou’s mouth on his, and he untangles every knot of resentment in Tetsuya, throwing aside those sharp pieces one by one as he molds him to his wishes. But they grow back like thorns in Tetsuya’s heart, growing harder and sharper as time goes by.

One day Tetsuya might get sick of him, but that doesn't matter.

This doll, only this one, he will never let go.

"Do you love me now?”

* * *

The jagged clunk of a coin-filled bag greets them a couple weeks after Shougo’s first visit.

“I’ll pay it in only bullion coins. A lot more than my previous offer!” He boasts with an eager grin.

It turns predatory when Tetsuya comes into his sight.

“Now let me have him.” He points, a spoiled child in an overgrown body.

Seijuurou hardly seems impressed by the amount. “You can take it back. We will not be doing business with the Haizaki family.”

In this mansion, his word is law, and it definitely extends to most places of influence outside as well.

This rejection completely takes him by surprise. Shougo’s sputtering now, like a bull frothing in pure rage.

“You—you will regret making an enemy out of me!”

The declaration is accompanied by a pompous strut, the loud jingle of coins in the bag he takes back with him, and the hard slam of the door is the final show of his outrage.

* * *

Next time he’s already at the top of the stairs before Seijuurou could come down to speak with him. Not that he has any qualms kicking out pests without having to descend a step.

Shougo shoves papers into his face.

“The deed for your land. I will buy it all if you don’t sell me your doll.” At least he got the term right this time, a commendable feat Seijuurou doesn’t find worth rewarding.

“We operate directly under the Queen, do you understand?” Shougo claims, at the end of his wits now. His patience continues to hang on a loose thread, and it’s about to ready snap under his frustration.

“I believe you have long overstayed your welcome here, son of Haizaki.”

Not a second passes before Shougo’s crumpling a white collar in his hand, pulling Seijuurou to eye level. A steely combination of red and gold stares back at him impassively, taunting him.

But his glare is cold and it locks Shougo’s fist in place as he feels himself being consumed by mismatched hues of fire. Burning wildly like it’s on the last of its breaths. His body, much bigger and powerful than Seijuurou’s frame, it breaks out into a cold sweat. Something…

Something’s very wrong with this man.

“Why?” It’s nothing more than a whine of a subdued dog at this point. “Why won’t you let me have it? What’s so special about that one?”

Seijuurou just continues to stare at him, into his eyes, watching the way the tremble, darting back and forth. "I’m sure you can show yourself out.“

"You—”

“Haizaki-san, please let go of him.” Tetsuya appears out of nowhere, placing calm hands on Shougo’s arm.

Except Shougo is anything but calm, and it’s more of a reflex, but he whips his arm away and knocks Tetsuya back with too much force.

Back into the stairwell.

The dreadful thud reaches their ears almost instantly. A sickening crack, something shattering. Shougo feels his stomach drop.

“Leave.” It’s Ryouta who growls at him, from a random doorway, like a watchdog in training, amber eyes glinting steel, the promise of pain from a curved dagger. “Leave while you still can.”

Shougo, who has never had to deal with the consequences of his actions, learns the taste of fear. He dare not even look at the dollmaker’s face.

This marks the final time Shougo is ever seen in this mansion.

* * *

“We can fix him… right, Akashicchi?” Ryouta asks with a tremble in his jaw.

He thought he had learnt everything under Seijuurou’s tutelage but this… this is something far beyond his imagination. Where does he even start putting it all back together?

“We can fix Tetsuya. We can.” Broken prayers and watery words, if they were all that’s needed to save him, Ryouta would drown in an ocean of his tears to pray his soul away to the gods just to get Tetsuya back.

“Ryouta.” With Seijuurou, it only takes a word to stop with theatrics.

This time is different. The tears are shed for someone else this time, and they’re endless; it is the first time he feels, deep inside, a wall has been broken.

“Ryouta.” His name, his first milestone of pride, he never knew it could sound this fractured coming from another’s mouth. Like his own identity without Tetsuya is left in tatters. “You are hereby relieved of your duties indefinitely.”

He thinks he might be hearing things in the chaos swirling in the heart-wrenching sight of what’s left of Tetsuya and what’s no longer him anymore, his shattered skull, his scattered bones.

“Akashicchi.” But his tears are louder. "You can’t…“

"Ryouta, I won’t be able to make dolls in the future.”

The panic, it creeps up on his spine. “ _You can’t._ ”

“Ryouta,” Seijuurou says his name one last time, steady and calm. The complete opposite of what they’re both feeling. Somehow he manages a smile, making sure it doesn’t waver, and the effort it takes brings more pain than he’d imagined.

“Thank you for keeping Tetsuya company all this while.”

* * *

Two things Seijuurou must never forget, the sole promise to his father, a solitary offering on his deathbed.

One, dolls are more fragile than humans. So much more. The trembling in his hands won’t cease while holding Tetsuya, in pieces.

Two, never confuse a doll for a human. There are boundaries clear cut like a mirror reflecting one’s vices, but Seijuurou has long fallen off the edge and into a hell that transcends natural law. Love for a mutated specimen born in an experiment between man and machine, it comes with a curse.

Now these two things will cost Seijuurou his life.

A dollmaker is a thing of magic, but they must pay a price for every new life they imbue in creation. A snip off the end of a lifelong thread, taking away a couple months or years, depending on what kind of life they wish for their doll.

Seijuurou gave up a third of his life for Tetsuya.

There is crafting, and there is fixing, which is much harder when you know it will leave cracks that can never be filled. There is a holistic change, inevitable when the parts to the whole go missing or simply break. He can’t bring back Tetsuya, not completely.

A month later, Shintarou is the one to remind him this, as a friend coming over to check on Seijuurou. He’s all sickly pallor and hollowed eyes now, he barely eats, barely breathes. It’s a chore to do anything other than keep at fixing Tetsuya.

“I’ve read about this, you know,” says Shintarou, faced with a lonely back that stays in a permanent arc over Tetsuya’s body.

“Do you realize what you’re about to do?” Shintarou asks another month later, head in his hands because he can’t bear to watch this man destroy himself any further than this.

Only the resounding clank of tools greets him, there are screws being undone, panels being opened. There is no longer a human in this room, apart from Shintarou, who only sees a ghost in the dollmaker’s wake.

After he’s done—Shintarou doesn’t doubt Seijuurou’s skill—he’d have forfeited life anyway.

* * *

He can no longer keep count of the days, but today—

“Open your eyes, Tetsuya.”

A pair of sapphire-cut eyes glitter in the sunlight streaming from the windows. The sight is somewhat familiar, it was what Tetsuya woke up to the very first time, sitting primly on a chair. Seijuurou is the only view that’s different.

He’s kneeling at his feet, taking Tetsuya’s hands and counting the years he has sacrificed with a kiss for each one on his fingers. They’re cold against his lips, and his eyes sting with the familiarity of it all. What a miserable lover he must be, to have only known coldness in Tetsuya, but as long as he can feel his touch, nothing matters after.

“Seijuurou.” Has Tetsuya’s voice always been so small before? It’s almost like he’s discovering new things about himself now that he’s been reborn at the hands of his master. Or is it that something has been changed?

“Tetsuya.” There is a certain sadness that foretells what will come out of his mouth next.

Tetsuya feels his chest twist in the metal of his bone, he is not prepared for this.

“Do you love me now?”

His master has paid a hefty price this time. More than half of his life this time.

How much time does he have left now?

It is so hard to make the cogs in his throat work with his thoughts. They’re twisting to a halt, everything slowly growing stiff. Rigid.

“Yes, Seijuurou.”

Silence.

Seijuurou rests his head on Tetsuya’s lap, vision blurring. Something wet slides down his cheek, it must be his heart that’s bleeding.

“You were a liar until the very end, Tetsuya.”

He wants to smile but he can’t drag out the right emotions from the onset of time slowing down around him. The pain, he didn’t realize how much effort it takes to breathe.

Tetsuya simply cards his hand through Seijuurou’s hair, until his master’s eyes flutter shut.

The silence in their mansion never lifts after that.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. This took longer than expected, I'm sorry I'm stuck in idol boy hell OTL
> 
> See you! (o´ω`o)ﾉ


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